Social media is a tool. Like any tool we have access to, it can be used properly to help or used improperly to hurt. The anonymity of chat rooms, message boards, and like-minded site comment sections allow people to be freer than they might be if they stood face to face in a room of mixed company.

he upside is that people can feel confident to express their views without fear that those views will label them. The downside-people may find out who you are and question your views. Recent events continue to highlight the downside.

However, I’m not interested in addressing the question of should you post something, the question I long to have answered is: Why do you feel that way. Bigoted temperament will outlive me and everyone who reads this. Those of us who regularly seek understanding and give greater import to the things we have in common over our differences, are slowly eroding the impact of bigotry and hate, but we need more converts. If you are incapable of eradicating hate from your life, then feel free to hate with just this caveat: Have a reason, and limit your hate to individuals.

How hard can that be? Rather than hate all Muslims, hate the participants of 9/11 and only those that continue to seek to destroy. Rather than hate entire neighborhoods and dismiss them as jungles, hate the criminals and morally corrupt who refuse to change. Rather than hate all whites as oppressors, hate only the one that oppressed you. Rather than hate every brown person in sight as an interloper, hate the conditions that create this environment.

But don’t waste your hate. Let the thing you hate be the thing that drives you to aid in implementing change. Don’t sit there idly stewing in the vile juices of your own creation — do something. What you shouldn’t do is post it and advertise it, that won’t bring about the changes you seek.

We need new rules about how we carry ourselves, publicly and privately. Not rules from government, work or school, but from ourselves. If each of us, especially if you are incapable of escaping hate, keeps it to ourselves — the whole world will be better for it.

Or you could just do what I do — refuse to allow hate to rule your life. Hate the sin and love the sinner. You see hate is not an opinion or a viewpoint, it’s just hate. So while we all should, and I say we do, have the right to freely express our opinion, expressing hatred is different, should be treated differently, and rightly so.